VIDEO TASK
Using any of the resources provided or others you find, produce a video of between 2-5 minutes in which you explore and set your view on what Britishness/British identity means to you.
this should feature:

quotes from politicians and experts

headlines from media coverage

statistics

images

'vox pops' (video footage of) of students or others giving their views on this

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Some resources you can use not just for this task but for other work (and subjects) too.

BBC BIG QUESTION PROGRAMME
20 min clip of a discussion programme filmed in a York school exploring the question "should we promote a united British identity?"

The reaction to this is notable in itself - look at how these two uploaders put an entirely different slant on this show:

BBC REPORT ON BRITISH v NATIONAL IDENTITIES (census analysis)
In a time of resurgent nationalism in Scotland and Wales, this 7min clip looks at the complexities of fixing on a British identity. There is a real surprise in some of the findings - contrary to the stereotype, older people are LESS likely to identify as British, and this is also true for ethnicity, as is explored in the clip.

BBC REPORT FROM 2008: Ridicule for suggesting promotion of British identity?
The response when a notionally left-wing party, Labour, proposed a national day and compulsory education on British identity, there was widespread resistance and much negative media coverage. This BBC report takes an impartial look at the response to proposals which are similar to those passed some 7 years later by a new right-wing government with little fuss or controversy.

Thursday, 12 November 2015

NOTE: this contains a range of complex terms, useful for much more than a General Studies exam. If you are a Media student you will in time be familiar with all of these, but can apply these in a range of subjects.

Nifty bit of content analysis (a 'quantitative,' objective' as opposed to subjective [eg semiotics] research methodology) by Roy Greenslade, reviewing how the story of a British soldier's arrest for murdering civilians in Bloody Sunday was treated.

Greenslade notes how the headlines of three right-wing papers focus on the anger of those opposed to the arrest.

He delves deeper, comparing a count of those quoted who are opposed to the number of relatives of the dead quoted, highlighting the stark disparity.

CHOMSKY AND THE PROPAGANDA MODEL

This, by the way, meshes well with a classic political economy approach, the framework laid out in Chomsky's propaganda model. He proposed that five filters ensure that counter-hegemonic ideas (information or arguments that might undermine the power base of ruling elites - it is Marxist influenced) are filtered out of media discourse; the media function not to underpin democracy but to undermine it. One filter is anti-left-wing propaganda, which we can see very clearly with the hysterical, rabid coverage of Jeremy Corbyn (let's not forget the very timid Ed Miliband, judged to be very right-wing by the Political Compass site, was dubbed Red Ed for his supposedly extreme leftist views!). Another is source strategies: selecting and highlighting sources favourable to the interests of the establishment.

As a starting point, to demonstrate how campaigns can attract wide attention, consider the various x for Number One campaigns that sought to keep Simon Cowell's latest X Factor protegy off the Xmas number one spot - how many of these campaigns can you name?

Friday, 23 October 2015

A playlist of videos giving examples of community breakdown - the image below lists the videos included, the actual playable video playlist is further down!

Note that only the beginning of the Theroux clip is shown in lessons, the full programme isn't suitable for younger viewers.
Note too that strong, potentially upsetting, views are expressed in these various clips.

Wednesday, 7 October 2015

TASK: You will be given one of the 30 human rights enshrined (included) in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights (dating back to 1948, a response to the horrors of WW2) to consider. Your task, using your own opinions as well as findings from research (I've provided you with some links with groups for and against human rights below) will be to come up with points on:

why it is important

examples of where this human right has been denied

examples of pressure group campaigns to enforce this human right

any argument against this as a human right

exceptions to or limits on this human right (does it conflict with others? issues around security, anti-terrorism, extremism? are there any government proposals to reform law on this area?)

(most importantly!!!) YOUR views on this: do we need stronger enforcement of this right, or do we need stricter limits on it? Is this a core British value; should we be pressuring other countries to recognise this human right?

[1:44] Here's the UN on what this concept of 'human rights' means, and where it came from...

[4:31] Here's a guide to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, from the Human Rights Action Center

[2:30] The 30 Articles of Human Rights ... set to some awful music

...

LINKS FOR FURTHER READING

There are many campaign and pressure groups such as Liberty and Amnesty International who focus on human rights issues

BBC programme [1hr, but short clips available]: 'Anger over votes for prisoners and the release of Abu Qatada shows just
what a toxic issue human rights law has become. In this provocative
film, Andrew Neil travels to Europe and across Britain to find out why
Britain follows these laws and asks can anything be done to restore our
faith in them?'

JUST THE FACTS PLEASE...
These links contain factual guides to the legal status of human rights in the UK, EU and globally...

Wiki: the history and evolving nature of human rights. The Western democracies denied ethnic minorities and women the vote until relatively recently; the human rights agenda and concept has a considerable history...The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: from the UN's website (with multiple further links to explore), here's a rundown of the 30 human rights declared universal in 1948, in the aftermath of WW2. These are not legal requirements under international law, although some of these have over time become part of international law. (Wiki link on this)

How the UN protects human rights: from the UN website again, the UN's own guide to what they do, and the many agencies and strategies involved. More independent sources might question just how successful they have been.

Sunday, 20 September 2015

“The
public debate and the media, which is becoming increasingly
celebrity culture, rather hysterical, sensational, and reduces the whole
thing to theatre. Everybody’s election campaigns are presidential,
everything’s attributed to the party leader. What matters is how the
party leader eats a hamburger and all this type of thing." - Ken Clarke, former Tory government minister, 2015

He also appealed to the media to raise their sights from personalities and focus on policy. “The media treatment of any politician over unsubstantiated allegations, be it David Cameron, me or anyone else, is wrong and too much of our media is obsessed with personality politics, obsessed with personal criticism of politicians and therefore detracting from very serious issues around housing, living standards, jobs or world peace.

“I say that kindly. I’m a member of the NUJ actually. Can we try to have more of a grown up media? Or is that too much to ask?” - Jeremy Corbyn 'has not decided' whether to kneel in front of Queen http://gu.com/p/4cybm

ISSUE: Has politics, or at least the coverage of this, become just another genre of TV/media entertainment, centred on personalities and 'star' power? Does our media properly perform its 'fourth estate', 'watchdog' duties?

Jez, he can rock a knitted jumper...
The media has a new bogeyman with 'Red Ed' duly vanquished...

But maybe he needs a bullet-proof vest?

FEBRUARY 2015, MEDIA FURORE OVER GREEN LEADER'S POOR PERFORMANCE:
The radio interview, as reported by ITV News:

Media coverage was consistently condemnatory and dismissive of Bennett - does this harm the Greens? Consider how closely UKIP's fortunes are tied to Farage.

As the recent spotlight on The Sun's page 3 has reminded us, Rupert Murdoch's entry into the UK media market back in 1968 (buying the NoTW, spectacularly closed in 2011 after the phone hacking scandal broke, and The Sun in 1969) has had far-reaching consequences. A comparison of the nature of newspapers then and now is extraordinary: all, whether popular/tabloid/mid-market (the red-tops) or quality/broadsheet have hugely upped their coverage of soft news (sport, celebrity, human interest) and cut some aspects of their hard news (politics, foreign affairs etc).

This has led to the development of two terms to describe a phenomenon which has since spread beyond the press into all media: tabloidisation and dumbing down.

Have the media, with their frequent focus on personality of leaders and the soap opera of parties' internecine (internal) splits and rivalries rather than policy, turned politics into another form of entertainment, 'politainment'?

There are those who would argue that the media does not in any way perform its fourth estate, watchdog duty as the guarantor of democracy. Noam Chomsky famously argued that it operates on a 'propaganda model', filtering out any radical content that challenges the governing elites (Manufacturing Consent) and creating a false sense of political competition (Necessary Illusions). Russell Brand has rather less scholastically put forth similar views recently, urging people not to vote.

Use the resources below to make up your own mind...

Politainment.
The big story of 2014. Politainment is what unites Boris, Brand and
Farage, the men who dominate our political dialogue to such an extent
that we’ve given up talking about it in favour of talking about them.
It’s an old idea (Texan politico Bill Miller coined the phrase “Politics
is show business for ugly people” back in 1991, before Jay Leno), but
with a twist. Today’s personality politicians are all (to some extent)
outsiders. They don’t have to stand a chance of making PM – or stand at
all – to make the weather. The centre is so indistinct that the fringe
has become the natural area of interest. A sideshow has developed, with
circus acts to match. Ugly business for show people. [Lauren Laverne, The Boris, Brand and Farage show: why politicians should steer clear of showbiz]

Politainment, a portmanteau word composed of politics and entertainment, describes tendencies in politics and mass media to liven up political reports and news coverage using elements from public relations.
Of doubtful virtue, declining amounts of content and substance can
easily be compensated by giving news stories a sensationalistic twinge.
Politainment thus ranges on the same level as edu- and infotainment. [Wiki]

Their policies are erratic, but their leading lights have pledged
support for slashing taxes on the rich, privatising public services and
repealing basic workers’ rights.Sentiments, though. Just 36% of voters
believe that Nigel Farage was privately educated, even though he was
schooled at the prestigious fee-paying Dulwich College; over half
believe the same for the state-educated Ed Miliband. Farage has
successfully effected an everyman appeal, complete with the almost
compulsory pint of bitter at every photographic opportunity. He doesn’t
sound scripted, but rather talks in the language of common sense; he
presents himself as the outsider against the machine. In a world of
relentlessly on-message, professionalised career politicians, it takes
little to shine. (Rochester byelection: beliefs of Ukip voters are soaked in leftwing populism)

Nigel Farage's Weather Forecast on BBC Politics Show
Notably, this was uploaded by 'UKIPwebmaster'.

Saturday, 19 September 2015

This links into an earlier post, in which I set out resources explaining the terms 'left-wing' and 'right-wing'.

The PC website carries a 'test' or survey which invites you to express on a wide range of issues, and then seeks to map your views onto the spectrum of left- to right-wing and authoritarian to libertarian. You might question its judgements on the essential nature of our current political parties, but they make for a useful talking point:

Monday, 7 September 2015

You will be formed into small groups with the 20-minute task of researching one major news story from summer 2015: 15 minutes to research individually, then 5 minutes to organise your findings as a group so you can brief the class on this issue.

You can present your briefing with or without display technology: the format of your briefing is down to you.

Start by agreeing a group leader who can check everyone is looking at a different resource to gather information, and help organise bringing your individual findings together into a briefing that is easy to follow.

Each student will contribute a short briefing, with some facts, quotations, opinions.

Each group will present a briefing on their topic which presumes the audience (the class!) has no knowledge on this topic or event. the style or format of this is up to, but must feature everyone's contribution. This should last around 2 minutes: its a short briefing!

Each group should also select an appropriate YouTube video and pick out a section of around 1 minute to show. Copy the URL and paste it in as a comment (scroll to the very bottom of the post and click 'add comment'). If you click share below a video, you can tick a box to make that link start playing at a specific point in the video.

Click on the web page address to highlight it; copy [CTRL+C] and paste as a comment to this post, adding your topic and the time the video should start at

SEARCH TIP
I've provided a very basic Google link, but you could try key words with news sources such as BBC or Guardian (BBC will be simpler usually, Guardian [newspaper] or Telegraph or Independent more complex, Mail or Express or Mirror less so).

YOUR CHOICE OF TOPICS
(look under the pictures for a hyperlink taking you to a simple google search for news on this story)

Monday, 13 July 2015

If you read through to the end of this short article, you'll find some interesting stats comparing crime in Norway and the US, which takes pride in the harshness of its prisons. Food for thought: should we focus on punishment or rehabilitation?

Sunday, 12 July 2015

UK ‘failing its young’ as gulf grows between generations
“The foundation’s vitally important index makes it clear that the UK is failing its young,” he said. “The UK, like other developed economies, has engaged in fiscal, educational, health and environmental child abuse.”

Click here to read the article; it uses quite complex language, being from a broadsheet newspaper

Tuesday, 7 July 2015

WHAT CAN I FIND IN THIS POST?
It starts with a short list of hyperlinked (CTRL-click to visit the page in a new tab, keeping this page open!) articles and a podcast, most looking at the issue of 'FOBTs' (gambling machines found in bookies which many are getting addicted to).
Videos on this follow.
Finally, there are a series of links for researching specifically the issue of teen/young problem gamblers.

FOBT = fixed-odds betting terminal

1: ARTICLES/PODCAST ON FOBTs
The resources below present a variety of views and experiences of gambling, including stories from some people who are addicted to gambling. Many argue that these 'FOBTs' are a key part of 'problem gambling', and you'll notice that one of the videos is from a pressure group specifically campaigning to ban these.

Newspaper articles
I gathered these from one source, The Guardian (they collect similar stories here); if you go on to other papers' websites websites you can find more such stories, some with different views

Monday, 8 June 2015

As teens, you are bombarded with media imagery glorifying drug usage; the following is a 1980s track that the media didn't realise was all about drug use. Can you think of any acts (or other media content: films, TV characters, games etc) that glorify drug usage?

That's not the only track that the media didn't realise was really about drugs; this BBC article lists others.

Sunday, 3 May 2015

The general election campaign sees the usual range of party political broadcasts and posters, but there are some rather more fun mash-ups out there, where footage is re-edited and re-presented to twist and transform the original meaning or message. The Observer brought together a few of these; click on the <READ MORE> link below to find the link; the picture is just a screenshot of the article.

Wednesday, 22 April 2015

NightStop work with local volunteers to provide advice and practical assistance, not least an alternative to the worst response to homelessness, sleeping on the streets, to 16-25 year-olds who find themselves in crisis and without a home.

There is a wealth of further information on what they do, how they can help, and links/contact details for NightStop and other relevant local agencies, on their website.

Below you can view a short film introducing you to some of the young people who have been helped by NightStop, and some of the volunteers who help ensure Bradford's young people have an alternative to sleeping on the streets - even one night doing this can lead to multiplying problems, and make it more difficult to resolve the problems that led to the homelessness.

Below you can find a PowerPoint quiz on homelessness and the law (amongst other issues), and photographs of NightStop in action.

Friday, 17 April 2015

AIMS:
YOU will be teaching the class...
...Not just presenting findings from your research, into a health issue and how it impacts on young people, but thinking of how best to make this interesting for and to engage your classmates

SCHEDULE:LESSON 1: You will have some time to form a group, agree a topic and begin to think about the lesson.LESSON 2: Time to plan and bring together materials.
You must make sure everyone in the group has ALL of the materials produced by the groups. If you have audio, video, PowerPoint, pdf or Word documents, you can send them to me and I will embed them within this post to help with this! david.burrowes@ilkleygs.ngfl.ac.ukLESSON 3: Deliver your 15 minute mini-lesson!

INITIAL RESOURCES:
Here are the two documents to help you with this work; the instructions (including hyperlinks you might find useful) and an example of a lesson plan: